Lauren Willig

When will your next book come out?

— The latest Team W book, The Author’s Guide to Murder, hits the shelves on November 5th, 2024!

Three authors walk into a bar…. That was how it all began, and now three very different authors (a cozy mystery writer, an author of paranormal erotica, and a very serious historical fiction author) have arrived at a castle in Scotland for a writing retreat to work on a book about a long ago Edwardian murder at the castle.  But things all go south when the owner of the castle is found murdered– multiple ways!– and our authors are not only suspects, but it turns out they might not actually be the BFFs they claim to be after all.  Are they really writing a book together?  And what actually brought them to Castle Kinloch?

This is something a little different for Team W: a madcap, contemporary murder mystery set on a tiny Scottish island.  As we were working on it, we called it our Knives Out meets Monarch of the Glen book (why, yes, there is a young laird named Archie!).  We had an absolute blast writing it (so many sheep jokes!) and we hope you have as much fun with it as we did.

— My latest solo book, The Girl from Greenwich Street, will be headed your way March 4th, 2025!

It’s Law and Order: 1800.  In January 1800, a young woman is found drowned in the Manhattan Well– and Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr team up to defend the accused murderer at the same time they’re preparing to tear each other to shreds in the 1800 New York elections.

And the craziest thing?  It’s all true.

On January 2nd, 1800, the body of Elma Sands was found in the Manhattan Well.  Suspicion immediately fell on a fellow inhabitant of her Quaker cousin’s boardinghouse, Levi Weeks, a man her family claimed had been walking out with her and had lured her to her death on the night of December 22 under the pretense of an elopement.  But had he?

As the Assistant Attorney General, Cadwalader Colden, puts together what he thinks is an ironclad case against Levi Weeks, the accused man’s older brother, an influential contractor, retains three of the most sought after attorneys in town: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and Brockholst Livingston.  But can they put aside their political and personal differences as they pursue the case?

The Levi Weeks case is America’s first fully recorded murder trial, and the testimony… well, let’s just say it’s courtroom drama of the highest order, with all sorts of shocking revelations coming out on the stand.  You can’t make this stuff up.

For over two hundred years, people have been arguing over what really happened to Elma Sands on that fateful night in December, 1799.  After a two year long deep dive into the archives, I have my own theories… but you’ll have to wait until the book comes out to find out!

What are you working on now?

— Right now, I’ve just turned in my still untitled autumn 2025 book: a contemporary paranormal romance set at Brooklyn’s historic Green-Wood cemetery.

I blame my editor, who, on one sunny spring day a couple of years ago, said, “Hey, I’ve got the family mausoleum keys!  Want to meet me at Green-Wood?  I’ll bring coffee.”  (Have I mentioned that I love my editor and her impeccable taste in coffee mugs?)  One afternoon of wandering around tombs later… I was hooked.  I knew there was a story there, involving a demon unleashed from a mausoleum, snarky Gilded Age ghosts, a hot widower horticulturalist with two kids, and a heroine with hereditary powers who doesn’t know she has hereditary powers.

I had the best time writing this.  For those of you who have been with me for a while, think Pink books banter.

The Green-Wood book, which will eventually have a title, is tentatively slated to release in time for the autumn 2025 Spooky Season.

Where can I find a printable book list?

Right here!  Voila the Printable Book List.  You can also find the Printable Book List on the Media Room page.

Where can I find the Band of Sisters Readers’ Guide?

You can find the Band of Sisters Readers’ Guide on the Band of Sisters page in the Books section.  Just scroll down below the book description and you’ll find the Readers’ Guide, along with a link to a short video and an excerpt from the book.  Or you can just click here to go directly to the Readers’ Guide.

Where can I find the Pink Carnation short fiction?

You can find links to two of the Pink shorts–  Bunny & Biscuits and Away in a Manger— for free on the website by clicking on the titles here or on the Pink Zone Home Page.  You can find the Pink Christmas novella, Ivy & Intrigue, in print form on Amazon and B&N or for free in PDF on the Pink Zone Home Page.

Are you planning to write Lizzie Reid’s story?

You know I never say never…. Although Lizzie’s story isn’t on the immediate agenda, it’s certainly there in the back of my head. Since Lizzie’s story takes place much later, chronologically, than the rest of the Pink books, I haven’t decided yet whether Lizzie’s story would be an additional Pink book with an Eloise frame or if it would work better as a stand alone novel.

Is The Ashford Affair part of a series?

The Ashford Affair is separate and entire unto itself. I did sneak a descendant of one of my Pink Carnation characters, Lord Vaughn, into the book (how could any descendant of Vaughn and Mary resist partying in the Happy Valley?), but other than that, it’s completely unconnected to any of my other books.

My second book for St. Martin’s Press, That Summer, which revolves around the early days of the Preraphaelite movement in 1840s London (see above), is also a stand alone. As with Ashford, however, I couldn’t resist putting in a Pink connection: the modern hero of the book, Nicholas Dorrington, is a direct descendant of Miles and Henrietta.

In what order should the Pink Carnation books be read?

For both the short and the long answer to that question, check out the Book Order page.

Do you have any plans to go back to writing the Pink Carnation Series?

I loved writing the Pink books.  I wrapped the series up for two reasons– um, no.  Three reasons.  Not one shall you count, not two, but….  First, I wanted to make sure I ended the series before it became stale, instead of letting it drag on and become a parody of itself, as sometimes happens with long-running series.  Second, I wanted to make sure I wrapped it up properly and didn’t leave readers hanging.  This world uncertain is, as the poet says, and nothing more uncertain than publishing.  A series can be hot one moment and dead the next, and there’s nothing more annoying than a series that breaks off without a proper resolution (ahem, 1990s remake of Dark Shadows, ahem).  Third, I had other books I wanted to write.  For a while, I tried juggling a Pink a year plus a stand alone a year, but with the addition to my life of small people who wanted to be fed and bathed and entertained and seemed to think that naps were something that happened to other people, the two book a year model became unsustainable.  Would I ever go back to Pink?  Absolutely.  There are at least two more stories I want to tell: Kat and Tommy, and Lizzie and Nicolas, not to mention that modern side novel about Eloise and Colin caught up in thriller-type stuff, and possibly a book set in–   Um, anyway.  There I go again.  At the moment, I’m focusing on my stand alones and the Team W collaborations, but Pink will always have a special place in my heart and in my imagination, and, possibly once again, in my computer files.

Do you plan to continue giving characters and couples appearances in future books?

It would be hard to keep them out of it. I would never bring old characters in purely for the sake of giving them a cameo, since that does a disservice to the current story, but my fictional world is a very interwoven one. Rather like real life, where you’re constantly running across people you know, my characters tend to bump into one another a fair amount, so it’s a good bet that you’ll see old characters in new books.

You mentioned you were possibly thinking about doing short stories to catch up with previous characters. Are you still planning on doing that?

As many as time permits! Right now, you can find Amy and Richard’s Christmas novella (Ivy & Intrigue), Henrietta and Miles’s first Valentine’s Day together (Bunny & Biscuits), and a Turnip wedding night bonus chapter (Away in a Manger) all up on the Extras page. I’m hoping to eventually get to the rest of the Pink couples, with Geoff and Letty the next up.

What area of the law did you focus on and work in? How has your work in the legal profession influenced your historical writing?

During my very brief legal career, I worked as a litigator. It was Big Firm litigation, which meant that I was dealing largely with corporations rather than individuals, and found myself learning a lot more about abstruse accounting principles than I would have otherwise liked. As to the second half of that question, I really don’t have a pat answer. I do think that there are interesting similarities in the way one constructs a brief and the way one constructs a story: both are productions meant to persuade. Both rely on the mustering of examples and the creation of a certain type of atmosphere. Aside from that, I’m not sure. Although the hero of The Orchid Affair is a lawyer!

What are your favorite historical movies/costume dramas?

My favorite go-to costume dramas include the Anthony Andrews Scarlet Pimpernel, the Ciaran Hinds Persuasion, the BBC production of Clarissa (Vaughn owes a lot to Sean Bean as Lovelace), the Sharpe series (do you sense a Sean Bean theme?), and Horatio Hornblower. I’m also a big fan of Dangerous Beauty, although I prefer the English title, The Honest Courtesan. Then, of course, there are the classics of swash and buckle: Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk, Robin Hood, Ivanhoe, and Zorro.

Do you outline your books in advance?

I outline constantly—and I save the old outlines, so I can laugh hollowly over them two months later, when they no longer bear any resemblance to what I’ve actually written. I’m always impressed by those people who can outline a book in advance and stick to it. Frequently, the bits on my original outlines I’m most pleased with are the bits that prove most unworkable in practice, and find their way into the dustbin.
Despite their lack of utility as an actual blueprint, I do find outlines quite useful for organizing my thoughts, and working through plot kinks. In general, I tend to have a fairly detailed outline for whatever the next five chapters may be, and then a sketchier outline for anything that comes after that. It helps me keep track of the overall story and pacing, while still maintaining the flexibility to adjust to unexpected plot twists.

How much of the modern story of Pink Carnation is autobiographical?

Hmm, a handsome Englishman, a cache of never-before-seen papers…. If only. I did loan Eloise my basement flat in Bayswater, as well as a rather bizarre party featuring models and glo-sticks, but the rest is pure imagination. And, no, no boyfriend of mine ever smooched another woman in the cloakroom of the Faculty Club, nor did I go abroad because I was thwarted in love. (Believe it or not, I’ve actually been asked that several times since the book came out—including by an old family friend!). It’s called fiction for a reason.

Where do you get your ideas?

Every now and again, the Good Plot Fairy will wave her magic wand over my head. When I fail to pay attention, the Good Plot Fairy will then bash me over the head several times until I sit up, stick a bookmark in whatever novel I’ve been reading, and take notice. At least, that’s what happened with The Secret History of the Pink Carnation. “What if…” a little voice whispered in my ear (most of my bouts of demented pacing and muttering to myself usually start with those fatal words, “what if”). “What if you paired a know-it-all English spy with a stubborn royalist heroine?” And once the idea appeared, it wouldn’t go away. That darned spy kept dashing back and forth through my head (sometimes swinging on a rope, just for variety), until I finally had to do something about him.

But that initial, comet-blazing-across-the-sky, Big Idea is only the beginning. Each book is composed of a mosaic of thousands of little ideas, ideas that invariably come to me at two in the morning when my alarm is set for seven. Ideas like, “What if Amy sees Georges Marston standing outside the house in a black cloak?” In fact, the bigger the initial idea, the more problems it causes, and the more mini-ideas it takes to sort everything out. For example, for the book I’m working on right now, the Big Idea, the idea that clunked me over the head—repeatedly—and wouldn’t leave me alone for nights on end, was “What if my hero were to accidentally elope with the wrong woman?” This seemed like a great idea. Until I started working on it. At which point I had to start answering questions like, “How in the hell do two sensible individuals get themselves into that sort of situation?” and “What was I drinking—er, thinking?”

Who are your favorite authors?

It’s always impossible to answer that without leaving scads of people out, since my favorite authors list stretches to an alarming length. But I do have a shelf of books that has traveled with me from my childhood room… to college… to various apartments in Cambridge… and even England. The Security Shelf basics are L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle, Robin McKinley’s Beauty, M.M. Kaye’s Trade Wind, Judith McNaught’s Almost Heaven, Paradise Lost, a complete Shakespeare, the collected poems of John Donne (featuring a rather cocky courtier glowering from the cover), ditto Yeats, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Stoppard’s Arcadia, C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces, and revolving selections by Nancy Mitford, Elizabeth Peters, Judith Merkle Riley, and Julia Quinn. Other favorites (which didn’t make it onto the Security Shelf, but are beloved nonetheless) include Karleen Koen’s Through a Glass Darkly, Diane Gabaldon’s Outlander, and anything by Georgette Heyer. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. My dream in life is to someday have an apartment with enough bookshelves to house all my books, without involving large piles in front of my couch and next to my bed and under my kitchen table….

I’m just starting my historical novel—do you have any research tips?

Lots and lots! I gave a talk on the subject at a conference last spring, and one of these days I really will get around to posting my workshop outline on the website. In the meantime, here are a few research strategies that have worked for me.

Start with biographies. Biographies often contain wonderful details about physical culture (clothing, food, architecture) that more straightforward political histories lack. They give you an excellent sense of what the time period was like as it was actually lived—and they also usually have excellent footnotes you can pounce on to locate other scholarly works and primary sources. For example, for my research on Napoleon’s court, I originally started with Theo Aronson’s The Golden Bees, Andre Castelot’s Napoleon, and Evangeline Bruce’s Napoleon and Josephine, and then tracked down the contemporary memoirs they had used as sources.

Don’t neglect museums. Some museums have wonderful collections of furniture and other everyday objects, and many (like my personal favorite, the V&A in London), have posted substantial numbers of images on-line. Not quite as good as getting to go in person, but still a wonderful source of ideas for furnishing your heroine’s boudoir. I’m also a big fan of glossy coffee-table books about antiques with lots of pictures and diagrams—and, fortunately, there always seem to be lots of those available, for a fraction of their proper price, at used books stores.

And then there are writers’ groups. I’m a member of the Beau Monde, the Regency chapter of Romance Writers of America. The sheer amount of esoteric information possessed by the members of the group could fill several libraries and quite a few history departments.